You Can't Save Me
by Rasiaa
Summary: 'Cause I don't even feel it/ body's growing colder with the distance now/ And I don't even mean it/ thought that I'd be different this time around/ this time around. It's an age old fight, who says you'd be any different? Fool. Nonmagic!AU


_For "The Card Will Tell Your Fate Challenge" on the HPFC forum._

_This may be continued upon request._

* * *

No one who knew could deny the abusive nature of Sirius' parents.

But the beatings and the verbal shit that Sirius took every time he saw them could never compare with the addictions.

Sirius sought an exit. He found a deeper circle of hell.

…

"You need help, Siri," Remus sighed, combing his fingers through the black, sweat-soaked hair of his boyfriend. Instead of responding, Sirius glared for a second before leaning back over the toilet and dry heaving again. Anything he had in his stomach was long gone by now, but the nausea had yet to disappear.

A breath later and Sirius was sitting up, leaning back into Remus' embrace. "I thought that's what we were doing?" he sighed tiredly, staring at his sickly reflection in the mirror. Dark circles like bruises around his eyes, sunken cheeks, pale skin and a thin coat of sweat to top it all off. He looked like he was dying. He felt like it, too.

"I mean professional help," Remus corrected.

A crease formed between Sirius' eyebrows. "I don't want to go to rehab, I've said," Sirius complained.

Remus sighed and pressed a quick kiss into Sirius' hair. "But I can't help you. I can only sit here and wait for you to lose your mind again. I can't save you, and it's killing me."

Sirius returned his gaze to the mirror. He stared into his own dead gray eyes, and said, almost without thinking, "I don't want you to save me. I want you to stand by my side as I save myself."

Remus looked pained. "Detoxing is not something you can do alone," he said quietly, a silent, hidden plea.

Sirius closed his eyes and leaned over the toilet, a gasp falling from his lips as he started to shake.

…

"Worthless," she sighed, waving a dismissive hand.

Sirius closed his eyes and fled, tearing through the house and out the door, ignoring the cold, biting winter air as the door slammed shut behind him. How many times has he heard those damning words? _Worthless. Freak. Useless. Dishonorable. Shameful._

He let out a choked sob as he started walking. He tried to hold back the tears to no avail. He was alone.

"You look like you need somethin', kid," a voice said, and Sirius jumped in response, swinging his head around to stare at the shabby man leaning against the building.

"What?" Sirius croaked, rubbing furiously at his face to erase the evidence of crying. Another hopeless endeavor.

The man gestured to Sirius, saying, "A pick-me-up. Somethin' to help you forget, if only for a little while," the man suggested.

Alarm bells began to go off in Sirius' mind, but then he thought of the woman who taught him about those bells and he scowled inwardly. He held out his hand defiantly and the man grinned, handing him a small package with white powder.

…

_Drugs, Sirius? Are you kidding me, mate?_

_Oh, god, Sirius. What have you done?_

Remus had said nothing at all, and that was the worst one.

…

Turned out he was Black to the core, and that was the worst part of the whole thing. The one thing he was trying to run from, he found within the deepest parts of himself. It was inescapable. Forever haunting him, never ceasing with the cruelty.

The idea that he could run from his demons was a joke. And if he couldn't outrun them, how could he expect to find the sunlight? The hopes he had of saving himself were as farfetched as the moon.

_You can't save me,_ he'd told Remus. _I can't save me_, is what he meant.

…

His head slammed into the bricks behind him, and he slipped on the water beneath him, his feet giving way as he lost his sense of balance and the traction beneath his shoes. He sat, dazed, for several moments before he reopened his eyes and saw that his attackers and his dealer were gone. _Fuck,_ he thought blearily to himself.

He stood on unsteady feet and reached around to ease the throbbing on the back of his head and couldn't find the energy to feel alarmed when his fingers came back sticky and warm with fresh blood. Instead, he stared for second before the smell got to him and he leaned forward to hurl in the cracks of the back alley where he found himself.

_Shit,_ was his last thought before he blacked out.

…

"What the fuck were you thinking?" James demanded, as soon as Sirius came to.

"James!" Lily hissed in reprimand, holding Harry closer to her chest. James looked genuinely sorry for a moment before he refocused on Sirius and swore quietly again. Sirius just groaned as the pounding in his head made itself known with a violent throb, and he tried to blink away dizziness before he leaned over the side of the bed and gave up the fight with his stomach to keep the acids in there where they belonged.

James leaped back with a hiss of disgust, glaring as Sirius shook miserably. "I'm calling Remus," Lily declared, sweeping out of the room, taking Harry with her.

Sirius stared dumbly at the door where the redhead had just disappeared, her parting words making no amount of sense in his muddled brain. He heard a sigh and turned slowly to stare at the familiar face of his best friend, wondering briefly where James had conjured himself from, debated the question for as long as it took for him to realize he didn't really have any energy to care, and then stopped wondering. James pinched the bridge of his nose and then readjusted his glasses, locking eyes with Sirius for a moment before declaring, "It's been five years. We've had enough. You're detoxing."

For an instant, the words of protest rose to his mouth, but he let them die there. James was right, after all.

…

The worst part about Remus, Sirius decided, was his disappointment. They had dated briefly when they were still in school, but Remus had broken off their relationship three years ago when they all found out about the drugs. "I can handle a lot of shit, Sirius, but I won't put myself through that kind of hell," were his parting words. It was the last time Sirius had seen the blond.

Now, standing in front of Remus all these years later, miserable and coming down from his high from the night before, he wished desperately to die. He loved Remus deeply, and to have the genius stare at him with those dead, resigned eyes and expressionless face was too much to bear. Remus stared for another minute at his shadow of an ex before turning his gaze to James, who was standing silently behind Sirius, waiting. Remus gave a small nod and James disappeared down the hall, leaving the two of them alone.

Remus stepped aside to allow Sirius inside, and Sirius moved into the unfamiliar apartment hesitantly, his head down and the need for his drugs boiling in his blood.

"You've refused rehab, then?" Remus asked, and Sirius jumped. His gaze met the familiar amber one before he looked back to the cream-colored carpet beneath his feet. He nodded once.

"The Sirius I knew was never this meek or submissive," Remus snapped, and Sirius looked up again, feeling an old spark of his dead, desperate fiery personality before it suffocated in his drug-induced haze. Remus evidently saw it, too, because the disappointment resurfaced and Remus walked away, leaving Sirius standing alone in the living room.

…

Four weeks later and Remus called James, saying, "I can't do this," in a desperate, frazzled tone.

Sirius didn't hear his response from his place in front of the toilet, but Remus snapped, "This is the reason I walked away in the first place! I have no patience for addicts!"

Sirius felt like melting into the floor. The closest he got was leaning into it, cowed and ashamed. It took a lot to get Remus this fired up.

"Because they relapse, James. I refuse to treat a twenty-three year old man like a three year old and childproof my apartment. That's not fair, not to me, and not to him." Here Remus paused, and then he simply snarled into the phone before hanging up and throwing it at the wall. It shattered upon impact, and Remus' long, pianist fingers buried themselves into blond strands as he sank to the floor. Sirius simply stared, hating himself.

…

For two months afterward, Sirius remained a weak, barely visible shadow, going through the motions of getting clean because he had to, not because he wanted to. Progress was slow, and Remus became more flighty with every passing day. Frequently, Sirius found himself crawling from the couch into Remus' bed, crying and needy, and Remus found himself allowing the clingy behavior. It was the only time either of them acknowledged their former romance, and its slow rekindling flame.

Sirius relapsed three more times in the year following the attack in the alley, and each time Remus looked at him with those disappointed eyes, and Sirius hated himself even more. It was impossible. He could not be saved. The damage ran too deep.

Despite Sirius' wishes and the way he begged, Remus and the Potters paid for rehab and shipped Sirius away to a private facility.

…

Sirius was clean after a six-year battle that lasted for a lifetime.

Remus welcomed him back and Sirius practically fell into his arms, not crying but shaking violently with relief and fear. Fear of himself, of the future, of the real world.

But Remus promised it was going to be okay, and so Sirius found himself with no choice other than to believe him.


End file.
